Abstract:
In the classic novel, Frankenstein , Doctor Frankenstein creates a living creature in the hope of cheating death. The monster turns against Doctor Frankenstein and kills several people, causing the doctor to regret his decision to make the monster in the first place. When states establish an international organization (IO), they create an institution with a life of its own. In doing so, states risk the institution becoming a monster and acting contrary to their interests. In contrast to Frankenstein, however, states are aware of this risk and are able to guard against it. This article explains that much of the existing landscape of international organizations has been formed by the state response to this 'Frankenstein problem'. The effort by states to avoid creating a monster explains, among other things, why there are so many IOs, why they vary so widely in scope, and the manner in which they are permitted (and not permitted) to affect international law and international relations. The article also identifies the four types of activities that IOs are typically allowed to undertake and explains how states choose which activities to place within which organizations. In addition to providing a new analytical perspective on IOs and how states use them, the article advances the normative argument that states have been too conservative. As if they learned the lessons of Frankenstein too well, states have been reluctant to give IOs the authority necessary to make progress on important global issues. Though there is a trade-off between the preservation of state control over the international system and the creation of effective and productive IOs, states have placed far too much weight on the former and not nearly enough on the latter.

Abstract:
This article places the UN Women's Committee at its centre in order to consider the normative implications of having a space within the realm of international law that is headed by women decision-makers, whose remit is specifically gendered and whose task is to uphold the rights of women. It suggests that the Committee's importance has largely been overlooked, which is a considerable oversight. The Committee is uniquely positioned to contribute to the transformation of human rights norms, occupying, as it arguably does, positions simultaneously at the centre and at the periphery of international law. In particular, this article examines the jurisprudence that has emerged under the individual complaints procedure of the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and questions how far the Committee has been able to develop women's rights in recent years into a body of law that departs from the normative and structural limitations of international human rights laws.

Abstract:
Global governance has been the buzzword for many internationalists for quite some time now, and the United Nations has been one of the primordial focal points in controversies about global order. This prominence of the UN has been especially remarkable in the context of deliberations about the legality and legitimacy of military force. For, despite the growing importance of the US as the world's most capable superpower, internationalists have not been muted by voices stressing the impossibility of successfully grappling with power-based interests and high-political considerations of predominant states through international law and organization. The emergence of a unipolar moment, a constellation supposedly characterized by a high concentration of military capabilities and widespread scepticism as regards the fruitfulness of multilateralism in the US has rather enticed many commentators to ponder all the more seriously the potential role of multilateral institutions, such as the UN – as a mediating structure vis-à-vis national interests, as a legitimacy-conferring agent the main function of which it is to rationalize the regime of the great powers, or as a potential counterweight to US-American unilateralism. The author of the book under review adds to this list as he endeavours to show that, after the end of the Cold War in 1990, the Secretariat of the UN repeatedly championed views that brought it into conflict with the US and other influential member states of the UN. Based on his own experience as a staff member in the Office of Legal Affairs since 1973, as the Director of the UN Secretariat's Office of Legal Counsel since 1988, and as an Assistant Secretary-General for Legal Affairs of the United Nations from 1998 to 2005, he delivered The Sir Hersch Lauterpacht Memorial Lectures at Cambridge University in 2008, in which he made a strong point for an independent role for the UN Secretariat as regards questions concerning the legality and legitimacy of military force.

Abstract:
The recognition of aboriginal title – i.e., land rights not derived from the Crown/government but rooted solely in the use and ownership of the land by indigenous peoples since time immemorial – is probably the greatest achievement of indigenous peoples in their decade-long struggle to de - fend their land and culture. Since indigenous peoples define themselves as a people through their genealogical connection to certain areas, the realization of the right to own, use, and live on their ancestral territories has always been at the centre of their struggle for the recognition and enforcement of their rights. Ownership of and control over their ancestral land and its resources are not only considered a significant contribution to solving the terrible social and economic problems indigenous peoples are facing. A considerable degree of self-management and control over land and natural resources is also regarded as essential to the indigenous peoples' survival as peoples and the preservation of their distinct culture. Yet until the 1970s the rights of indigenous peoples to their ancestral lands were almost completely ignored by states and international law. The loss of indigenous peoples' control of and ownership over these lands during colonization was regarded as a historical and irreversible fact by national governments. When from the 1970s onwards courts in several common law jurisdictions began to hold that the indigenous peoples' customary tenure had indeed survived the acquisition of sovereignty by the Crown and continued to exist as a burden on the Crown's radical title to the land, the national governments were – after years of inactivity and neglect – finally forced to act and to enter into negotiations with indigenous peoples to settle the indigenous peoples' land claims. In the 1990s, United Nations human rights monitoring bodies and regional human rights courts picked up the aboriginal title idea, thereby placing indigenous peoples' issues and concerns on the international agenda and providing indigenous peoples with additional leverage against their respective governments. The recognition of inherent indigenous land rights not only enabled indigenous peoples to retain and regain ownership and control over land and resources, but it also became the platform for the recognition of other indigenous rights, in particular, the right to self-determination and the right to autonomy. Hence, through the recognition of the aboriginal title doctrine, indigenous peoples were not only brought to the attention of their respective governments, but they also became recognized as actors – and no longer as mere subjects – on the national as well as on the international level.

Abstract:
This article examines the question of how states have responded to the comments of the United Nations Committee against Torture through an analysis of eight Western European states. It is concluded that the Committee's recommendations have had a substantial impact in four of the states surveyed, however only a limited effect in two other states, and little or no impact in the two remaining states. These findings lead to concerns as regards the effectiveness of the Committee against Torture. The article focuses on the Concluding Observations made by the Committee on the reports submitted by the states in question.

Abstract:
This article examines the intersection between the private security and military industry and the emerging framework of global administrative law ('GAL'). I explore in this article one aspect of this intersection, namely the use of GAL to create a taxonomy of the industry's regulatory schemes. The industry is characterized by a fragmented and decentralized regulatory framework, which has yet to be presented in a complete and orderly fashion. This article fills the gap by applying GAL's methodology to the private security and military industry. Using the industry as a case study in GAL, I identify (1) international formal administration (the United Nations Working Group on Mercenaries); (2) distributed domestic administration (contract and domestic legislation); (3) hybrid modes of administration (multi-stakeholder initiatives); and (4) private modes of administration (industry associations and codes of conduct). By emphasizing – but not limiting itself to – hybrid and private modes of administration, this article describes what is an increasingly complex manifestation of global governance. Its purpose is to highlight GAL's potential in understanding and contending with the growth of the private security and military industry.

Abstract:
At the outset of the 21st century and most recently since the UN High Level Dialogue on Migration and Development of 2006, the conviction has emerged that 'migration, if managed carefully, can help to raise the living standards in poor countries' (at 7). In his new book The International Law of Economic Migration, Joel Trachtman analyses political economic constraints to counter forceful, but ill-founded, evidence against opening borders to migrant workers. The book achieves a quantum leap for labour migration research, as it starts its analysis where most books end theirs.

Abstract:
Two renowned scholars of international human rights protection from the University of Berne offer this excellent volume which is based on and expands the second edition of their book Universeller Menschenrechtsschutz (2008). Professor Walter Kälin was representative of the UN Secretary General on the Human Rights of Internally Displaced Persons, and from 2003 to 2008 a member of the UN Human Rights Committee. Jörg Künzli is Associate Professor of Law at the University of Berne.

Abstract:
Since 11 September 2001, countries across the world have adopted an enormous range of anti-terrorism laws with the potential to undermine even the most basic and long-established human rights. Fundamental principles such as habeas corpus and public trial before an independent and impartial tribunal have been thrown into question. Administrative detention without trial is no longer, in Justice John Paul Stevens's words, 'the hallmark of the totalitarian state', but already a reality in some democracies and under serious consideration in others.

Abstract:
There is little doubt that non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are an enduring phenomenon in international law. While the formal involvement of NGOs with the United Nations (UN) system has longevity, tracing back to provisions in Article 71 of the UN Charter, discourses of globalization have given added impetus to their presence in international law under the broad church of 'global civil society'. The Chair of the recent Panel of Eminent Persons on United Nations– Civil Society Relations set up to examine the relationship of NGOs with the UN system characterized the rise of civil society as one of the 'landmark events of our times'. 2 This visibility has meant that NGOs have increasingly become a source of debate amongst international legal scholars. Some commentators welcome the participation of NGOs in inter - national legal and political processes, while others express unease about the involvement of NGOs within the international system and question the legitimacy of this presence. The involvement of NGOs in international law therefore remains contested, and key issues about the extent and nature of their participation, their legal status and legitimacy as actors in international law are unresolved. The four volumes under review take us some steps further along in understanding the present and potential participation of NGOs in international law in a number of ways. First, these volumes provide a comprehensive picture of how the presence of NGOs in the international legal and political systems has evolved into the many varying arrangements that NGOs have with international organizations. Second, the volumes seek to engage with some of the more intractable issues; in particular, these volumes explore the challenging questions about the legitimacy of NGOs as actors in international law. Finally, these volumes highlight that this inquiry is a fundamentally inter-disciplinary exercise; going beyond legal analysis, it is important to consider the basis on which the legal status of NGOs rests.